


Four Seasons

by haosmullet



Category: K-pop, NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cute but kinda sad, Feelings, Feelings changing, M/M, Playlist accompanying, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sargent! Johnny, Seasons changing, Some Fluff, Ten's cute, many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 13:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16833787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haosmullet/pseuds/haosmullet
Summary: A love story being told in four seasons. Four moments. Four different tastes.Songs for each season:Summer: Love is on the Radio - McFlySpring: Smile Flower - SeventeenFall: Easy Love - SF9Winter: Apology - iKON





	Four Seasons

**SUMMER**  
“Back in the old life before you existed, I couldn’t see right, my windows were misted” (Love is on the Radio, McFly)

07:00 AM. Monday. To get up and start another massive day of work - another day of the same sad routine, another day of emptiness - was becoming Ten’s biggest fear. He used to light up like the sun that is now shining through the window pane, on his bare face, just by thinking that another day was starting, just by considering all the new choices he could make, all the stories he could write. But now, it plainly seemed like this flaming candle inside his soul was just disappearing, killed by the different same choices of everyday life. Ten almost felt as a little bird, pretending to fly inside a tiny cage.

Breakfast. Brushing teeth. Putting on clothes. Getting the apartment keys. Opening the door. Closing the door. Locking the door. Walking to the coffee shop. And working. The start of another same equal Monday. Maybe he was just now realizing the strangeness on the feeling of working at this place, where people used to start their days. While on the other hand, he felt constantly trapped on that constant start. But differently from them, Ten was not moving on, after a simple order. He was absolutely stuck. Stuck on that same black and white picture.

At 9:35 Ten could already call it a day. All of the same customers had already been there, eaten the same old orders, and were for sure now living their great day somewhere else. Surely, Ten acquired that shallowness because monotony surrounded his life.

It was then. On that very moment that his life automatic mode switched to the rarely used off position. The so common sharp sound of the doorbells echoed through the ambient once again, but that time it was not only a same-client that actually just ended up forgetting the keys on the balcony. He was a slim tall figure, with dark hair and dark eyes, which – Ten wouldn’t doubt about that – could see through him. His face was beaten up, bleeding, and even then Ten could see the explendid and out-of-ordinary beauty in it. The boy’s clothes were totally messed up, covered in dust and in his own blood. However, despite the uncommon view, he approached Ten in a much ordinary way.

‘Good morning. Hum.. I would like a… black coffee, please. No sugar.’ He said looking at Ten, pain perceptive in his deep voice.

‘Hum... Ok. It would be 3 dollars” Ten replied, trying to pretend that his energies were not shaken by this unexpected change on that so boring but safe routine.

He gave the exact asked amount of money and moved to the nearest table on the shop, not even looking back, and there he waited peacefully for his order. It took Ten fifteen minutes to prepare the coffee, although it was only required five. He was, through that time, trying to recompose from the disturbance, and telling himself that he was just another client. It was irrational to act like that.

When the coffee machine beeped ready, Ten was taken out of his thoughts and was, once again, trying to follow the steps of natural behavior. As he approached that kinda mysterious stranger table and placed the order there, the boy shot Ten a “thank you” look and simply dozed off to his own life again, staring through the window. But Ten was there still, awkwardly standing in front of him, maybe trying to figure out what was happening and what should he do.

‘Excuse me… sir, but… do you need something else?’ Ten said, a bit uncertain.

‘No, thank you’ The stranger replied directly, firmly. And Ten tried to just let it go, but, how could he possibly let his face go.

‘Hum.. s-sorry but.. do you need me to call an a-ambulance? Or do you need some.. ice to just… you know..?’ Ten tried, insisting on some kind of contact or help.

The other boy, though, looked at him with surprise in his eyes. It fully felt like Ten was the one light in a dark long tunnel that he had been crossing, like Ten was the only one caring for his existence on that moment.

‘No need for ambulance, but I would gladly accept the ice, if you could get me’ He said with his head low, a little shy.

Ten rushed to the back of the store, and rapidly got ice on the fridge and evolved it in some paper that was on the kitchen balcony. He quickly got back to the front and handed it to the stranger, which smilingly thanked him once again; his smile now, a lot brighter than his previous dark and hurt expression. But after a couple of minutes, he left in a hurry, looking intensely to his own phone. While Ten, who was secretly observing from a corner, noticed that one very known automatic button in his head switching on once again.

On the following days, somehow, Ten expected him to show up and save him from the monotony one more time. His heart was screaming so desperately for something different, for some change that he got his mind fixed on a stranger that, as well as he knew, could possibly be a thief on run, or maybe a mafia leader. But the boy didn’t come back on that week. Or on the next week, and on the next also.

On that third Monday, barely a month after, when Ten had already given up on the extraordinary, he was back. Ten was surprised to feel so attached to his idea of new that as the boy was getting into the coffee shop, he could feel the world slightly getting some pastel colors. This time he seemed to be recovered from that bleeding event, being also just casually dressed.

‘Hello. I would like to get an Americano, please’ He said brightly. Indeed, his coffee choices followed his inner humor.

‘Ok... it would be 7 dollars, sir’ Ten answered, trying to avoid his gaze this time. Perhaps he was embarrassed by how much he leaned on that boy’s figure, thinking, a couple of days before, that they would never ever meet again, after that fated encounter.

‘Hum… you are the ice boy, right?’ He said, happily, trying to get a better look of Ten.

‘E-excuse me?’ Ten replied, a shaky voice leaving his now dry mouth.

‘The boy that helped me with ice some weeks ago. It was you, wasn’t it?’ He replied, and somewhere in his voice – or on Ten’s mind – hope could be sensed.

‘Yes. It was me’ shot back Ten, quickly trying once again to avoid his intense gaze.

‘Hey! I was hoping to meet you again. Thank you for helping me that other day. I know it might have been weird to have this crazy guy getting into your store all covered in scars and blood’’ He laughed expressing his nervousness. But then, the strong gaze returned. It was so fierce that it was almost violent. “And.. I was wondering if, maybe, I could do something to make up for that inconvenient?’ 

**SPRING**  
“I will become the spring to your smiles” (Smile Flower, Seventeen)

19:45PM. Thursday movie date night. The moon light was specially bright on that cool night. After four months of talking and shared restaurant bills, Ten was now fully convinced that and was constantly referring to Youngho as ‘the change my life was expecting’. Cliché. But that did not mean less real. He could feel warm inside, a pleasant temperature that matched with the one that Youngho’s hand had. It took him 2 pizza nights, along with some cokes to find out the other boy’s profession. Sergeant of the special military forces. And it took him 2 more spaghetti dates to overcome his very own relationship blocks, together with the weight on that “military” word.

Ten’s previous black and white world was getting more and more coloured by Youngho. His calm breath along Ten’s neck when the boy hugged him tightly was blue. And his eyes slightly closing together when he smiled was a glowing yellow. It was purple when Youngho visited Ten in the coffee shop, pretending to be just casually stopping by for the mocha, or the latte, or the Americano he would get, and staying by for at least three hours more.

And now, as Youngho walked him home from the small movie theater on the neighborhood, he could feel rose being added to that extent list. The fluid conversation, the timid laughs that were shared and that warm feeling present on their hands, it was all a golden shade of rose. Maybe it felt like this to match with the exact same tone of Ten’s cheekbones on that moment.

Approaching the entering gate of Ten’s building, Youngho’s always consuming gaze landed on him for the billionth time that evening, almost asking for permission. He would be travelling on the next day, he had said, for a mission on an unknown country. It was okay still. Ten was getting used to the lack of routine, and although that would seem contradictory, this only made their relationship even more intense than others.

‘So, I see you in 3 days, Sergeant Seo’ Ten said, jokingly.

With a simple “yes” as a reply, the other boy laughed. Covering some kind of uncertainty in his smile. Ten gave him a quick yet full of passion kiss on his soft lips, and turned his own feet to end up one more lovely date. Youngho, however stopped him there, placing those – once again – warm hands on Ten’s arm, and, in a whispering voice, called his name, wishing to let it out, not caring about regrets. 

‘I love you’, he said those emblematic three words to Ten, with a shy beautiful smile. And the boy, as always being more and more and more taken off his monotonous black and white world, could only truthfully reply that he, indeed, deeply loved him too. For everything that he had changed. For completely sticking that said automatic mode on the off set. Just like that, Ten could add another cheerful color to the list. Not a new feeling, not a new sense, but the known ones, the experienced ones in a new light. Red. Loving him was burning red.

**FALL**  
“I hate love, because it hurts” (Easy Love, SF9)

22:38PM. Wednesday at home. Apologies, sincere or not. Ten simply stared at the blank on the wall as Youngho once again said how sorry he was for another crack on their pure rainbow glass. Ten didn’t exactly know when that started getting wrong, at that point. Maybe the lack of time for Youngho’s part, maybe the lack of patience on Ten’s. It all was simply not the same.

‘They’ have turned more into Ten eternally waiting for Youngho to come back from various mysterious missions on somewhere unknown in the world. Sometimes it would be Ten taking care of Youngho’s destroyed self, as now he was getting specialized on first aid ministries. Most of the time, it would be only Ten constantly afraid of not listening to Youngho’s deep low voice once again, or seeing his dark eyes that always made him feel naked in front of the boy.

Although, Ten would recognize, he had known all of that from the start, and yet, he had fully accepted the work conditions, it was only now starting to get to problem of a bigger proportion than that a tiny little piece on their big red puzzle. Loving him was slowly turning into a darker shade of red, maybe it was even turning into a scar, like the ones placed on his beautiful face on that memorable day.

Still, Ten endured the pain and sadness, he said to himself that it would be still worthy at the end. He said once again “it is okay” to Youngho apologies. And days kept passing on. And months kept passing on. 

Ten was living agony every day; not because of melancholy but because of uncertainty. It suddenly became the adjective accompanying ‘us’. Uncertain. He would, as always, get used to the feeling, to the situation, to the loneliness. Until Youngho, on such a gray rainy day, decided to put a final stopto this confusedness, to bring ‘us’ the way out.

‘I am leaving you’, he said with no tears in his eyes, but with that same uncertain feeling, which was living inside of Ten, in his voice. Ten stared at him, and he knew that was all he could do. They had, finally, let that first crack break apart their crystal house. And it hurt, it hurt a lot. 

**WINTER**  
“I hope that our memories are short and beautiful, just like the sunset” (Apology, iKON)

07:00AM. Sleepless night. Ten’d been over and over and over again repeating to myself that it was easier like that. Because they were already broken, because they could not fix themselves anymore, because they have changed, and all around them have as well. But the truth was that he thought they were still in love, even though their love was now the world’s darker shade of red.

His hands, his scent, his smile, his breath, everything, have turned into memories that Ten could see in his dreams. And now Ten was there, on his cold bed, trying to exhale the pain along with his breath, trying to recover, to heal. He constantly told himself how much he hate Youngho, for ending his happiness in such cold way; however, just like the upcoming season, Ten, himself, was only turning into thin ice.

It was another Monday, one more of the past same days. Ten was back to that automatic mode. The world was once again black and white, but it was okay now. He was broken inside this black and white world, but in fact, it would be okay someday. He would color the world on his own this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!  
> So, what did you think? Did you enjoy it? Tell me!  
> Please, leave comments, suggestions or just anything you want! 
> 
> There were some songs that could somehow describe each section, so the quotes were there! It may be nice to listen to it while reading :)
> 
> If you wish to request me anything, or just chat about kpop, hit my dm on twitter @mhaosmullet!  
> See ya!


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